


Punishment

by carriecmoney



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AU - Track and Field, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 10:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4301706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carriecmoney/pseuds/carriecmoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suga must've been a bad man in a past life; not only is he cursed to be a distance runner, but he also has a crush on a discus thrower. Aesthetically, of course. Track and field!AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Punishment

**Author's Note:**

> {A/N: I thought this would be more interesting than it was but it turned out to be me reliving my high school track days more than anything. Oh well. Middle distance runner!Suga/discus!Daichi is still very important to me.
> 
> I didn't tag this because I didn't want it as one of my three tags, but there are mentions of vomit in this, because if you didn't puke you didn't try hard enough. Similarly, the title is inspired by the track phrase, "My sport is your sport's punishment".
> 
> [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/carriecmoney) [tumblr](http://carriecmoney.tumblr.com) [drawings of this+some other cast members that didn't make it into this little ditty](http://carriecmoney.tumblr.com/post/123510930721). POLE VAULTER!HINATA THO}

Days when the throwers practiced in the field were bad days for Suga.

Not that the distance runners had any pent-up animosity towards them, or that they interfered with each other’s workouts in any manner. In a perfect world, they wouldn’t even notice each other as Coach Takeda yelled out time splits across the field and Ukai beat common sense into his throwers. But it would be an imperfect world after all if Suga didn’t get to look at Daichi Sawamura.

They had been in the same grade since junior high, but they had always operated in different circles, classes never overlapping, friends never inviting them to the same birthday party. Which, in retrospect, was probably a good thing for Suga, since who knows how he would have embarrassed himself if he had to _talk_ to the Greek statue that he was. Even though he was Japanese, like half of their children-of-immigrants school.

Takeda called for the five minute break between 400 sets, the distance team gasping as a unit, struggling not to fall to the track so their legs wouldn’t lock up. Suga lurched to his water bottle, set by his shirt that had been discarded thirty minutes into the muggy April heat, and chugged too much of it, wiping his mouth on his bare arm as his eyes wandered to the discus net diagonally across the field. The throwers were clustered there, getting chewed out by Coach Ukai, probably about an untied shoelace or something. Suga bent down to grab his shirt, dizzy world tilting around him, and used it to wipe at his dripping face and chest. He could pick Daichi out of the crowd in just a few seconds after three years of practice, with his broad shoulders and his shorts that always seemed a size too small. A field away wasn’t the best vantage point, but it was the only time Suga felt comfortable enough to stare without awkward questions and even more awkward answers. He wasn’t ready for that conversation quite yet.

His lungs and legs still burned when Takeda blew his whistle for them to round up at the line. Everyone moaned, but obeyed, dropping their water to squeeze together at the marker. Suga slid in between Chikara and Hazu, then chanced a glance over his shoulder in time to catch Daichi’s spin and throw, discus arching through the air-

 _Tweeeet!_ Suga jumped, then jerked into pace, gaining the step lost to his ogling to weave between the others to the front.

* * *

That weekend was the last regular meet of the season, packed with overstocked schools trying to make last-chance regional qualifications to keep the track and field magic flowing. Suga was one of the many in pursuit of the clock - he just needed to shave a few seconds off his 800 time to qualify. He had made his 1600 time with milliseconds to spare that morning, legs shaking as he tried not to collapse on the finish line to get trampled by the rest of the heat’s spikes. A 4:34 mile time was nothing to sneeze at, enough to clinch his seat on the regionals bus, but the 800 was _his_ event. If he didn’t get under two minutes in it now, right before he graduated high school and went on to a college that had only an average track team, when would he?

After lunch of a box of granola bars split four ways and draining the rest of the team’s water cooler, Suga led the other male distance runners on a warmup jog around the center field, dodging stretching athletes, officials, and miscellaneous field equipment alike for a three-lap jog. Even after running anchor for the 800 relay that morning and the 1600 before lunch, it never hurt to keep limber. His sweat was a second skin by now.

In the discus net, the boys were on their third wave, top-heavy high schoolers lined up just out of the danger arc of its mouth. A black and orange jersey was inside; Suga slowed, mouth parted around a light pant, as Daichi swung, swung, spun, muscles straining as the discus hurled through the air-

Suga jerked out with a bang - he had run right into someone stretching on the grass, knee in their neck. He stumbled to keep his balance as she squawked and rolled away, snapping at him to watch it as both of their teammates laughed. Suga’s face burned more as he stuttered an apology, head down as he ran away, his teammates poking at him, still laughing.

“You’re so spacey, Suga,” Chikara snorted, elbowing him. “You’re not gonna false start on us this time, right?”

Suga sneered at him. “Screw you, you’re not even in my heat.” Chikara pulled a face back as they returned to the patch of grass they had claimed as their stretch zone, plopping down to stretch his hamstrings, nose to knee. Suga stayed standing, grabbing an ankle and folding his leg behind him to stretch his quads, balancing on one foot with long-practiced ease. He put his back to the discus net and focused on his warmup.

There were pros and cons to being the best on your team in any given event. Of course there were the bragging rights, the longer breaks at practice, and the heightened attention from the coaching staff, all packaged with the true thrill of approaching the finish line with no sweaty back in front of you.

The bad news was that you raced last.

Suga watched four heats of the boys’ 800 blow by, each faster than the previous, as he kept loose in the outside lanes of the final stretch. He yelled at his friends when they passed, the coaches on the inside doing the same, even though he knew they wouldn’t hear much beyond their heads. His nerves were buzzing, misfired bees contained by his sweat and skin and humming to get out. The final heat couldn’t come quick enough.

When the last person in the next-to-last heat stumbled across the finish line, falling to his knees ten yards away, they shuffled him and the other stragglers to the grass inside or the concrete gutter outside the track, whistling for the next heat to line up. Suga’s heart pounded in his throat. Shit, he totally wasn’t ready for this.

He arrowed for lane one. He was seeded second in the heat, only behind the beast from Shiratorizawa, and anything longer than a 400 didn’t use lanes to divide up the athletes but squashed them all together on one curved line, fastest on the inside. He’d be proud of his hard-earned spot if he wasn’t so busy being anxious, stomach bubbling. That last granola bar was a mistake.

The Shiratorizawa beast grunted at him, their encounters engrained by now. Suga nodded back, but his internal eyes narrowed. _Today you’re gonna be watching my back on the final stretch, bitch_.

The officials ran down the line, making sure everyone was in order and no toes were on the painted line. Suga set his shoulders, right foot forward, eyes on the bend in the track. He inhaled, held it - exhaled.

_On your mark. Get set. BANG_

Suga elbowed ahead of the pack at the gunshot, opening his stride to leap past the kids to his right, keeping pace with the beast to his left around the first hundred yard bend, legs pounding, wind in his hair. This was the stretch that always reminded him why he did this.

He and the beast broke away from the rest on the second straight, the roar of the stands dull behind the blood and wind in his ears. Everything faded to the jar of each step, the stab of a stitch in his side, and his breathing, in, out-out, in, out-out. Thoughts scattered into nothing; he would have grinned if it wouldn’t mess with his face. He knew somewhere, his team and his coaches were screaming encouragement at him, but that didn’t matter. All that did was getting past that purple jersey.

The second lap was the killer, when the endorphins and adrenaline of the starting line had faded into white pain, but you couldn’t stop yet. Suga was three steps behind and beside the beast, lungs on fire, arms pumping straight - _no way was this asshole getting away from him again-_

All of track was pain.

The last hundred fifty yards were the worst things to ever happen to Suga, skin gone cold, legs numb, throat charred - he couldn’t breathe deep enough, long enough, fast enough, man _fuck_ this beast-

In the last ten yards, the beast dredged up a hidden wind and sprinted ahead; Suga was too tapped out to do the same. He was gonna be sick.

He lunged across the line, legs pounding like the transmission in a stickshift as he collapsed to a jarring stop, all fours in the grass halfway around the bend. The rest of the heat was pouring in behind him, but his world had narrowed to the revolt in his stomach as his heaving for breath turned wet.

When his gut gave up, he grimaced, wiping his mouth on his jersey with a trembling hand. He _better_ have at least made his time.

He was shaking, gasping, sweating, crouched over his own bile and legs a wobbly mess when a large hand touched his back. “You okay there?”

Suga whipped to glare at Ukai - no, of fucking _course_ he wasn’t okay-

Daichi the discus was there, thick eyebrows knit together. Suga choked when his panting lost its rhythm, and Daichi knelt to grip his upper arm steady. “Whoa there, you gonna puke again?” he asked in that low rumble Suga had been straining to overhear for three _years_ now. Suga let out a distressing whimper that could only be considered normal at the end of a meet. Daichi’s face shifted - a grimace, a harden. “Alright, up you get,” he said, hands sliding in Suga’s _gross disgusting awful_ sweat as he forced Suga to his feet, holding him up with an arm around Suga’s back.

Just kill him right there.

“That sure was something,” Daichi said, too light, smiling in Suga’s face. Suga’s mouth twitched, still too winded to close it. “Seriously, watching you run is when I get why people call it poetry in motion, you’re great,” he said, just standing there with him. Was he rambling? “I mean, you’re great all the time, I mean as a runner, but-”

“Daichi,” Suga breathed, putting his hands on his knees to keep them steady. Daichi bent with him, and it’d be great that he was touching him if he wasn’t so damned _hot_. In temperature. “Stop talking.”

Daichi’s fingers clenched in Suga’s jersey. “You know my name?”

Before Suga could muster up an answer, Takeda ran up, Suga’s water bottle in hand and glint in his eye. “Suga! That was _fantastic!_ ” He shoved the water in his hands. Suga’s smile trembled as he straightened again before he shot back as much water as he could get in between breaths. Takeda leaned to the side to look behind them. “Did you throw up?” Suga nodded. Takeda beamed. “Wonderful!”

Coaches were damned sadists. Suga groaned, wishing he could appreciate Daichi’s wonderful arms around him more. “Time, coach?” he gasped, rubbing at his face with his arm. God, his jersey smelled like puke and salt.

Takeda lifted the stopwatch around his neck so Suga could read it, the 2:01.46 standing out even as his vision swam. “New personal best!” He slapped Suga’s arm (the one not held against Daichi’s side), and finally acknowledged the thrower. “Good meet for you, too?”

Daichi huffed. “Decent enough.”

Takeda nodded, his whole body bouncing with it. “Don’t worry about your sign-off, Suga, I dropped your name with the clipboard for you,” he said, jerking his thumb at the official who double-checked the finishing order of each heat. Damn, he’d completely forgot about that. “I gotta go check with the others - don’t forget to cool down!” he yelled as he jogged away to the stands. “Proud of you!”

Suga waved feebly, water sloshing in its bottle. Daichi chuckled, setting Suga’s hair on end. “Glad he’s your coach and not mine,” he said, guiding him further into the grass and away from his accident. Suga wheezed a laugh and caught the eye contact of the beast across the track. He nodded at Suga, red face impassive; Suga nodded back. _Next time._

Daichi cleared his throat, withdrawing his arms as Suga was standing just fine on his own now. Suga squirted some water on his head, shivering as it ran in cool fingers down his scalp and neck. “Not how I wanted this to go,” he breathed, barely speaking. Daichi tilted his head.

“Sorry, what?” Suga shook his head, sweat and water flying.

“Nothin’.” He tried to smile - so much for his imagined first impression. “Thanks.” He made to go for his shirt and sneakers, wobbling a little bit legs not completely turned to jelly. Daichi bleated, flinging out an arm to block his path. Suga froze, eyebrows shooting up; Daichi yanked it back, scratching the back of his head.

“Well - I’d feel bad if I let you go so soon after that.” He coughed, face pink. Oh? “You - you need any help stretching, or anything?” _Oh._

Suga’s mouth flopped open, panting only sort of labored now. “I- I wouldn’t mind, some company, I guess.” Daichi brightened, and Suga laughed, since barely a puff of breath. He jerked his chin towards where he left his clothes. “Let’s go. I need to move.”

Daichi nodded like Takeda, bouncing with it, and Suga laughed again, leading the way around the discus tent, spikes cutting into the grass.

Who knew his Greek statue was a dork?


End file.
